Swim Signature: Owner Flashy Accent Trailer Blade

Swim Signature: Owner Flashy Accent Trailer Blade

Owner Hooks has done something pretty cool with the Flashy Accent Trailer Blade series. The Flashy Accent is meant to compliment and add flash to any bait. You can add a flashy blade on a barrel swivel to just about any bait you can imagine. I cannot at all claim to have even scratched the surface of what these Flashy Accent’s are capable of. There are just too many baits and applications.

You have two willow leafs and one Indiana blade to choose from. Way too much still to explore, but pretty neat how well these compliment small baits, and even fish well stand alone.

Senko Upgrade:

Its hard to beat a Senko. Any accessory that will actually compliment one of the Top 3 fish catchers of recent history, is something to consider. Keith Poche put a blade in a Senko and put together an awesome 2012 BassMaster Classic as a result. A simple modification to a simple bait to give it a different look and fingerprint. The Flashy Accent is perfect for job to Poche your Senko. The Senko is so do nothing, so neutral buoyant, so simple, that adding flash to it and changing its original is always going to have drawbacks, but shoot, it’s going to have advantages at times too. Around current, where the blade is going to be flopping and turning and churning in the eddies and fast water sections, the Flashy Accent is going to really liven up and enhance what the Senko might do. I love how the bait helicopters straight down. Looks like an arrow or missle or something headed straight toward the bottom, but also uses the blade to glide along. The bait (and this happens when you’re drop shotting too) will rest on the face of the Flashy Accent and use it to plane as it falls sometimes. The other times it tends to helicopter the blade, blade end first, of the Senko and I really like that look. I tried to capture that in the video above. Fishing the 5″ Senko on a #1 Owner Mosquito Hook with criss crossed O-Rings that you put on with a Wacky Tool.

Part One: Cut #1 Paper Clip. Use to pin the Flashy Swimmer, thru the swivel, you can even remove the plastic keeper if you want and save it for using as a hook keeper, the paper clip will hold the swivel metal to metal just fine. Super Glue paper clip into bait with Flashy Swimmer, very carefully, for added insurance.

Part 2: take the horse shoe cut paper clip and shove it down snugly into the end of your Senko. Use your pliers to narrow up and make the horse shoe longer, etc to best secure the Flashy Swimmer into the bait.

Completed Rig. Snug down the horseshoe and go fish. I like the larger of the two willow leafs for the 5″ Senko. The smaller willow leaf Flashy Accent would look great in the 3 & 4″ Senkos.

Head Spins:

The Fish Head Spin is quietly and consistently catching lots of fish in lots of places. Grass, hard bottom, river, whatever. Places where the A-Rig is now catching them, which is lots and lots. The beauty of the Head Spin is adding some bladed flash to a swimming bait. Now, with the Flashy Accent, you can turn your drop shot baits into mini ‘head spin’ setups. Especially when you use full bodied drop shot baits. As well, with the Flashy Accent Senko Rig ala Keith Poche’s 2012 BassMaster Classic performance, you are turning your Senko into a head spin/spinnerbait of sorts. Notice how the Flashy Accent causes the Senko to fall blade end first, and how the blade turn and spins or helps the bait glide back to the bottom. The Flashy Accent is helping us blend styles and techniques, and your only limitation is your imagination. Here I am fishing the 1/2 oz Fish Head Spin with a Little Dipper as a trailer and the larger of the two willow leaf Flashy Accents.

How do you make a Fish Head Spin better? If “Fish Head Spinning” your Senko might make a Senko better, in some cases, how about Alabama Rigging (multi-rigging) your Fish Head Spin? Where you have a sorta bait ball appeal, the Flashy Swimmer gives another blade and flash to the Fish Head Spin.

Drop Shotting:

You can drop shot the Flashy Accent Trailer Blade as a stand alone bait. When your drop shot bait is on the bottom, you can do mini ‘strokes’ and the Flashy Accent fishes like a mini spoon, like guys who stroke spoons off ledges off the Tennessee River. Pretty cool drop shot refinements and integration of a few techniques into one. When you add a Flashy Accent Trailer Blade to your drop shot softbait, you give your softbait a look it probably hasn’t had much. I found the Flashy Accent compliment full bodied shad style drop shot baits like the Yamamoto Shad Shape, Jackall Clone Fry and Owner Wounded Minnow really well. If conditions call for a more horizontal and castable drop shot approach, you can sorta slow grind/hop your drop shot to make it a swimbait with this setup. Swimming your drop shot rig. It has given me the idea that I really need to lighten up the drop shot weights I’m using, especially in shallow water/current situations where you want your rig to tumble and come over gravel well. A well matched, l drop shot weight could be used to literally allow you to swim a small drop shot worm, like a fish head spin/drop shot combo, 1.5 -3 feet off the bottom from 0-100 feet. Anyway, that’s what I saw in the Flashy Accent in its action and fishability with the Wounded Minnow. I’m fishing the Wounded Minnow on a #2 Mosquito Hook. You could definitely sorta ‘stroke’ your drop shot too, which is wild.

Drop shot the blade only and ‘stroke’ the blade on slack line with a drop shot setup. Pretty cool action and a new twist on drop shot fishing.

Owner Flashy Accent turns you drop shot into a head spin/swimbait of sorts, if you use a full bodied shad style drop shot bait. This is the Owner Wounded Minnow I’m using to show how the Flashy Accent compliments a drop shot bait.

Alabama Rig:

If you look at the implications of umbrella rigs and what the Alabama Rig did to our fishing, you realize we are foolish to not be using teasers and dummy baits at times give the appearance of a school of bait. The Flashy Accent provides you a mechanism to ‘A-Rig’ whatever you want, like a hard bait, or any hard bait you can think of. You basically are only limited by your skills with rigging, but the hardware is now there to add little blades to baits that otherwise had none.

Indiana Blade Owner Flashy Accent on a 3″ Big Hammer, which tells me it can be fished on the Alabama/Umbrella rigs too. Why not add blades and additional teasers to swimbaits in some cases, especially umbrella rig cases?

The Rig Affect

You can say things about the Flashy Swimmer that put it in the same conversation as the Alabama Rig. You are creating multiple flashes within one castable lure. You’re re-arranging the way blades are being strung up and hung…lets see we have inline blades and safety pin framed bladed baits. Underspins and Head Spins quietly join the party. Look at what Spencer Shuffield did at the 2012 FLW Tour Table Rock Lake event and the umbrella rig he was throwing in Missouri. It had 3 teaser blades as part of the setup. Missouri is a 3 bait only state so to maximize his effectiveness and fish within the rules, here comes this edition. Flashers and teasers, get your mind out of the gutter, we are talking about catching those suspended fishes that chase balls of baits here. My aloha pal Trevor Lincoln, from down around the junction of El Capitan and San Vicente Lakes (San Diego, CA), makes this bait called the Trip Jig. I cannot share all the details of everything I know about the Trip Jig that my friends share with me because it’s not mine to share. However, I can share what I’ve done to the Trip Jig thus far, since I fished around a lot of shallow grass this year in the SouthEast (Okeechobee, Seminole, Guntersville, Santee Cooper), and gone thru a bunch of Grass Minnows in the process:

The Trip Jig with 3 Grass Minnows on Lake Guntersville. The Trip Jig has absolutely no class: short skirt, flashy, teasy sorta bait that can be fished weedless style.

Moving Forward:

The Flashy Accent is a very unique accessory and new piece of terminal tackle in my tackle box. I basically try putting it on a bunch of various baits and see how it swims and looks and fishes. And of course, I’m fishing the ones I like and collecting footage to share in the future. The Flashy Accent is just something that literally compliments or adds some flash to just about any bait in your box. I tried to show some basics on ways I have found worthy of exploration to start. How about taking off hooks on hardbaits and using blades as teasers instead? You ever notice some Japanese hardbaits come with blades as tails and they basically put blades in places we don’t expect them at times? The umbrella rig and what we’ve learned about bass willing to chase an entire bait ball better than a single stand alone, especially while suspended. All related stuff to where and why the Flashy Accent has my attention and is being integrated into my fishing. Swimbait/bigbait implications? Don’t know yet. Have some ideas and applications but haven’t validated it enough to say. Work in progress. Feel free to join the conversation and post your thoughts/experiences below. MP